Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, Department of English and American Studies, Linguistics

Contact details

alexander.onysko [aτ] aau.at

Department of English and American Studies

Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt

Universitätsstraße 65-67

A-9020 Klagenfurt

Phone: 43 (0) 463 2700 2501

Project: 'Word trucks' and 'voice canoes' as sources of playful associations: Meaning interpretations of novel English compounds by monolingual and bilingual speakers

This project investigates figurative associations that can underlie a playful interpretation of words. More specifically, the project focuses on the role of conceptual figurativity in word play, i.e. on how conceptual metaphors and metonymies can contribute to the occurrence of word play. The investigation is set in the context of New Zealand and involves monolingual speakers of English and bilingual speakers of English and Māori, the indigenous tongue of New Zealand. Comparing monolingual with bilingual speakers allows testing the hypothesis of whether bilingual speakers appear to be more creative (cf. Kharkurin 2012) and playful in their association to the novel English compounds. To test this idea, a task was designed which asked participants to interpret the meaning of a set of novel English noun-noun compounds. Twelve test items were created by combining general lexical items from different semantic domains (cf. Maguire 2010), providing associative space for interpretation. Data were collected during a one year research stay at the University of Waikato; a total of 140 monolingual and bilingual university students of New Zealand European and Māori ethnicity participated in the task. The analysis and the results from this project intend to add to an exploration of the cognitive dimensions of word play emerging from meaning interpretations.

Biography

Alexander Onysko holds a doctorate in English linguistics and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at EURAC Bolzano (Italy) where he coordinates a EU-funded project on multilingualism at schools in Europe (AMuSE). In addition, he lectures in English linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria). Previously, Alexander held a post-doctoral position in English linguistics at the University of Innsbruck and acted as temporary full professor in English linguistics at the University of Hamburg, the University of Bochum, and the University of Innsbruck. In 2011 he was a visiting scholar at the School of Māori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato in New Zealand to initiate his current research projects on the semantics of compounding and on the representation of cultural conceptualizations in New Zealand English as spoken by Māori–English bilinguals.

His research interests are in the areas of language contact, cognitive linguistics, word formation, and World Englishes. He has carried out a thorough investigation of English influence on German in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, and has continued to work on English–German language contact focusing on hybrid compounds, anglicism discourse, as well as in joint studies on grammatical gender assignment and pragmatic aspects of lexical borrowing. In addition, he has carried out research on language contact between Māori and English in New Zealand and has conducted a joint study on the use of Māori borrowings in hybrid compounds of New Zealand English and on the use of selected Māori borrowings in corpora of New Zealand English. His current research project in the network is based on a dataset of meaning associations to novel English compounds by monolingual and bilingual New Zealanders.

Publications (Selection)

Onysko, Alexander (2007): “Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity, and Written Codeswitching.” Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. [Linguistik – Impulse und Tendenzen]; pp. 376.

Onysko, Alexander (2009): “Exploring discourse on globalizing English: A case study of discourse on anglicisms in German”, in: English Today 25/1, 25-36.

Onysko, Alexander (2009): “Divergence with a cause? The systemic integration of anglicisms in German as an indication of the intensity of language contact”, in: Falco Pfalzgraf (ed.): English in Contact with Varieties of German. Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang, 53-74.

Onysko, Alexander, Manfred Markus & Reinhard Heuberger (2009): “Joseph Wright’s ‘English Dialect Dictionary’ in electronic form”, in: Antoinette Renouf & Andrew Kehoe (eds.): Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 201-220.

Alex, Beatrice & Alexander Onysko (2010): “Zum Erkennen von Anglizismen im Deutschen: Der Vergleich einer automatisierten und einer manuellen Erhebung”, in: Carmen Scherer & Anke Holler (eds.): Strategien der Integration und Isolation nicht-nativer Einheiten und Strukturen. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. 223-239.

Onysko, Alexander & Sascha Michel (2010) (eds.): “Cognitive Perspectives on Word Formation”. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs]; pp. 431.

Onysko, Alexander & Marta Degani (2012): “Introducing a project on the role of bilingualism in English and Te Reo Māori for New Zealand English”, in: LAUD: General & Theoretical Papers, No. 78, 1-18. (Link).

Callies, Marcus, Alexander Onysko & Eva Ogiermann (2012): “Investigating gender variation of English loanwords in German”, in: Cristiano Furiassi, Virginia Pulcini & Félix Rodríguez González (eds.): The Anglicization of European Lexis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 65-89.

Onysko, Alexander, Marcus Callies & Eva Ogiermann (2013): “Gender variation of anglicisms in German: The influence of cognitive factors and regional varieties”, in: Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 49/1, 103-136.

Onysko, Alexander (in print): “Māori English on the background of language contact in Aotearoa/New Zealand”, in: Herbert Schendl & Sabine Coelsch-Foisner (eds.): Contact and Conflict in English Studies. Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang.